Joker Drabbles
by MonsieurRiehl
Summary: DRABBLES! xD
1. 1 Something Easy

Joker Drabbles #1

Soemthing Easy

The first time the Joker saw James, the Joker was deep in a discussion with the Penguin about blowing up a bridge. They were at the two-month-old exclusive, invitation-only villians hangout lounge and bar, The Underground.

As The Underground had grown more popular, it began to attract more dangerous place had private booths along with an open lounge area with couches. It was sleek, stylish, and the service was incredible. The villians got respect, alcohol, and a high brow atmosphere to conduct some of the most dasterdly transactions in Gotham. The manager, a man named Shadow, ran a tight ship. And unfortunately the waiter's job of providing high-quality service with a side of confidentiality, left the applicant pool a little, well, lacking. James got the job on the fly one night when they were short-staffed. Shadow had just thrown the towel at another waiter for spilling a drink all over Poison Ivy, which was not appreciated.

James was cutting back to his appartment through a back alley when a door opened and Shadow tossed the waiter out.  
James stopped.  
"Keep your mouth shut, boy," Shadow growled, and slammed the door.  
Five seconds later the door opened again and a hand dragged James inside. "You need a job?"

One bridge wasn't much of a discussion, and Joker kept pushing the Penguin to consider something more ingenious, like blowing up all the bridges except one at exactly 3:15 am. Penguin really just wanted to pull a massive bank heist, and Joker suggested that they try something more complicated, like robbing all of Gotham's banks at the same time, not that he needed the money. In the middle of this heated conversation, the waiter came around.  
They had already ordered drinks and the Joker was stretched out on a couch, hand dangling off the arm of the couch. The waiter's hand barely grazed his as James put the drink into Joker's hand out of nowhere. Then the Penguin had his and James was moving across the space, tray of drinks in one hand and quick fingers of the other handing out drinks left and right, taking the Joker's attention along with him.

He disappeared back to the bar and the Joker tried to focus on talking some fun into Penguin. He kept an eye out this time though, and when the waiter came around about ten minutes later to ask if they wanted anything else, the Joker caught his arm and stopped him.  
"Vodka and Sprite," he said, eyes boring into the waiters.  
"I'll have it right out for you, sir." James replied, and flashed a bright smile.  
That startled the Joker. His fingers slipped and James took the Penguin's order.

Joker sat frozen for a few seconds, enchanted by his smile. People didn't tend to smile at him; they were afraid.  
'Damn,' Joker thought as he watched the man move to the bar and back. He spent the rest of the evening halfheartedly listening to the Penguin try to convince him, and eventually told his fellow criminal that if he planned on getting the Joker to commit to anything, he needed to try his hand at something a little more ambitious.


	2. Chapter 1 Part 2 (incomplete)

He was afraid, plain and simple. Only, of course, it was never that easy, because Joker prided himself on being fearless, laughing in the face of danger, and all that.

Why did it have to be so complicated?! If the waiter was interested, it would take all of ten seconds to pull him aside and ask him out. Unfortunately for Joker, he had no idea how to approach a man who might be straight, might be in a relationship, might simply not be interested. If he knew how the waiter felt, he could plan for it and probably pull something off, but he really didn't have a clue.

Just thinking about the entire situation made Joker want to burn something, and after due consideration he combined gasoline and firecrackers to cause something between a fire and an explosion in a nearby doughnut shop. 'Who sleeps anymore?' he thought. It was three in the morning, and despite the fact that Joker had first laid eyes on the waiter the previous evening, his thoughts had been consumed with the man ever since.

Focusing on his plans was so difficult with the waiter's face popping into his head.

"Why are you so distracting?" Joker moaned out loud, dropping his head onto the desk he was working at.

Finally Joker had managed to push thoughts of the waiter's smile aside and focus on his planning for a few hours.

He stood in front of a full length mirror, feeling relatively successful and trying to ignore the strange twinges of fear running through his veins. Joker stared at himself, trying to envision himself as somehow attractive to the waiter. He chuckled at his reflection, the fool.

But that didn't stop Joker from straightening his tie and making sure his hair was in place. The average appearance check complete, Joker proceeded to check the various knives attached to the interior lining of his suitcoat. They varied in size and shape, from very short to an very, very thin knife that was ten inches long and completely impractical. They ranged from serrated edges, knives with wicked rough jags and teeth like broken glass, to smooth, sharp knives that could slice through skin like warm butter, no matter how lightly it touched. To complete the outfit, he slid a loaded pistol into the waistband of his dress pants.

On the bright side, since he was going to a bar, a little alcohol might be in order. It was possible that a side of mild intoxication would make this evening a bit easier.

His plan was simple. Either procure a date with the man, or kill him so Joker could think about something else.

If he hadn't been trying so hard to keep his mind off of what he was about to do, Joker would have planned ahead a lot more.

That is to say, he was going in more or less unprepared, discounting the aresnal of weaponry he was carrying.

Joker felt his heart beat just a bit faster as he opened the door to the Underground. He flared with anger at himself for feeling like this; being awkward and nervous wasn't his style.

He got himself a seat on a comfortable futon and a mixed drink that tasted so strongly of alcohol he wondered if it was poisionous. But the burning distracted him from the man who handed Joker his drink. He took a giant swollow nearly the moment the drink arrived in his hand, and for once instead of floating away the waiter just stood in front of him until he opened his eyes.

"You know, there's no requirement that you have to get drunk the moment you walk in the door," the waiter said, watching Joker.

"That's my business," Joker replied curtly.

The waiter shrugged. "Tell me when you want another one." He shot Joker half of that wonderful smile and then he was gone, moving as gracefully as before.

Joker settled in his seat, crossing his legs with one ankle on his knee. He sipped his drink and pretended he wasn't watching the waiter.

The night slipped into early morning as patrons finished up their business and escaped into the protective cloak of darkness. Joker sat as still as a statue except for the occasional sip of his drink, waiting.

He had just finished the last drop of his fifth drink when the waiter appeared. The bar was almost completely empty at this point.

"Want another?" the waiter asked, in a tone that suggested he was asking something closer to "Have you had enough?"

"No," Joker replied dully and let the waiter take the empty glass out of his hand.

"Okay, what?" the waiter said. "You keep staring at me."

Shit. Joker shook his head and snapped himself out of his slight stupor.

"Let's talk," Joker replied, his voice sounding much smoother than he expected it to. "Alone."

The waiter tipped his head toward the back room. "Give me a few minutes. I have to wipe down some tables."

The waiter slid into a booth beside Joker. 


	3. Chapter 2

So how I've been playing the Joker lately is

well, he starts out as this crazy guy, obviously

who does violent shit in creative ways

The main difference with my Joker is that it occurred to him that shit wasn't going to work out with Harley. So he broke up with her and is just roaming the city, planning some massive plot,

And somehow or another, he runs into James.

This last time:

It was basically the Joker's fault, not that he would care. When he was last in Arkham, Joker managed to goad the Riddler into temporarily losing his marbles – this time, he is going to commit crimes first, and place riddles in obvious places (billboards, building lights, etc) that suggest where he already committed a crime to "help" the culeless police find the bodies. So when Joker breaks out of Arkham, several other villians, including the Riddler, escape as well. This occurred about a week ago.

At this point, the Riddler is still on the loose, and his crimes are escalating from minor robberies and property destruction, to leaving scavenger-hunt style clues for just anyone to find a box with a bomb in it with a five second countdown (with secret, less obvious instructions in the clues to call the police and not be an idiot), to several single murders within a few days of each other.

Between the Riddler's escalating crimes and the Joker blowing up the top five floors of Gotham tower three days before, the city is overcome with fear. Though that might also have something to do with Scarecrow, whatever he's up to…

At any rate, on the night in question, Joker was cutting through a major alleyway (a bit wider than your average alley) and suddenly there are bodies everywhere and blood is pooling around his feet.

He looks around as he walks through the mess – they're all dead, so what does it matter if he steps on a few of them?

"Looks like I missed all the **fun** ," Joker muses, wishing that he had had the opportunity to slaughter a dozen people with one sharp knife. He was looking down, checking out all the bodies and various visible wounds in the semi-darkness, when he stepped on a hand and the man grimaced.

Joker stopped. It was the light, nothing more. But he found himself crouching to get a closer look, still stepping on the man's hand and shifting his weight as he leaned forward onto the balls of his feet.

The man desperately tried to not move as the person above him pulverized his hand.

"Pretending to be dead, are we?" the Joker asked in the irritating way of people who feel that things they know should be offered as a question rather than a statement.

The man didn't respond to that, so Joker poked him hard in the chest where his shirt was covered with blood.

The man let out a sharp release of air, then he groaned. "Get **off** my hand," he demanded, since it was pretty obvious at this point that he was alive.

"You won't need it when you're dead." Joker replied, but moved his shoe off after another few seconds. "Scarecrow?" He asked, because the information would be useful sooner or later.

It was exactly as he expected: the man nodded, eyes still screwed shut.

"Well, are you planning on dying?" Joker demanded.  
"I was planning on waiting a few more minutes before I made a break for it," the man replied, still with no idea who he was talking to.

"Get up then. You're coming with me."

Joker wasn't sure exactly what to do with the man, but his plan was still forming, swirling around in his brain, and hostages never hurt, especially hostages too injured to escape or fight back.

James tried to haul himself to his feet. After a couple minutes of watching him hurt himself more, which was amusing, Joker got the feeling that he'd better get away from this crime scene before Batman or the police showed up. He reached down and pulled the man to his feet like he weighed nothing, then grabbed him by his arm and started walking.

Thirty seconds later the man gasped "Could you.. maybe.. slow down?"

"No." The Joker replied, and kept walking at the same pace. On the bright side, the man was too out of breath to ask any more irritating questions, and since his eyes were closed, there was little risk of the man learning where the secret entrance to the Joker's hideout was. Win-win.

So the man passes out, and Joker tosses him on a table to see how badly he's injured, since it would really be a waste to have the man die after dragging him all the way here. So Joker ends up stitching up a massive slash across the man's chest and another cut that isn't horrendous in comparison from the center of his chest across to his right shoulder. Apparently Joker isn't half bad at doing stitches, because though it looks like shit the wounds are closed. He wraps some gauze around the whole damn thing and calls it good.

Joker had actually been kind of missing having someone around to talk to, so he relocated his planning to sitting on his bed leaning against the wall and waiting for the man to wake up. He told himself he was just keeping an eye on the man to make sure he didn't screw anything up, which wasn't really an excuse for putting the unconscious man on a bed instead of in an empty cell, but Joker was busy utilizing his brainpower to try to figure out where Riddler, and for that matter, Scarecrow, were and what they might be up to, and how that could fit into the possibilities of dismantling all of Gotham's motorized transportation.

The man woke up a few hours later, distracting Joker from his inner complexities. Their eyes met and Joker couldn't help himself but to smirk at the man.

"I'm not afraid of you, you know," the man said warily.

The Joker leaned forward. "But aren't you?" he asked.

"Not unreasonably so."

Joker thought this over. "Reason doesn't do much for me."

The man sat up. "I could scream and run, I suppose."

"It wouldn't do much good," Joker replied.

"I didn't think so." The man put a hand to the gauze around his chest. "Um.. thank you."

Their eyes met again. "Don't." Joker glared at him.

"I'm not afraid of you," the man said again, though this time it sounded a lot more like he was trying to convince himself.

Joker moved like a flash of lightning. In a moment he had the man's hair in one hand, holding him in place, and the cold blade of a sharp knife against his throat with the other. "Afraid now?" he murmured into the man's ear.

The man's eyes were closed. "Yeah," he admitted.

"Good," the Joker hissed, then pulled the knife away, though they were still much closer than they were before.

The man lifted his hand a few inches, then stopped himself from feeling his neck to make sure he was really alright. He could see his hand shaking and pressed it flat against the bed to make the movement less obvious.

Since he had always believed the best defense is a good offense, the man forced himself to say more despite being half in shock about the likelihood of actually losing his life. He leaned forward as well. "Why do you care," asked the man, "if I'm afraid of you?"

The Joker's grin got twice as big and he chuckled, then just threw his head back and laughed. "You really can't shut up, can you?" he asked, smirking at the man, leaning closer.

The man looked frozen for half a second, then he replied, "No, I can't" and a smile somewhere between awkward and terrified, along with being genuinely amused that the Joker had broken out in laughter, slid across the man's face for barely a second. He looked away from Joker's eyes the moment he smiled, leaving himself totally unprepared when Joker bridged the four-inch gap and kissed him.

When Joker pulled away and leaned back, they just sat there, staring at each other, both afraid now though neither of them would have cared to admit it. It seemed like the silence stretched forever, both of them statues, afraid movement would shatter them to pieces.

Then the man, all of a sudden, as if overtaken by a will stronger than his own, grabbed Joker by the collar with both hands and pulled them together, and kissed him back.


End file.
